This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Iso's created a new writing system for English where, rather than letters that sort of have to do with the sound of the word, English words are written using Chinese characters that mean the same roughly the same thing. For things like ambiguities, certain little word endings like aspect markers, and words like "Marco" that don't exist in Chinese, the original latin letters are used. (For example, 一 means "one", and has three written forms here: 一A for the word "a", 一N for the word "an", and 一e for the word "the".)

Guys let's just all learn Lojban

I realize this is a bit of a longshot, but I've decided to take up crossbowin' as a hobby, and I was wondering if anyone else had any experience with it. Mostly I'm just wondering if anyone has any kind of tips on what brands are better or more reliable; I think I've settled on a pretty basic recurve since I have no intention of hunting (and it's actually illegal in my state, which is... surprising?) so the breadth isn't a disadvantage and the ease of use and maintenance is a huge plus, but I don't really know if any manufacterer is worth seeking or avoiding.

Probably just get a Barnett if nobody knows. And let's face it, I doubt we've got any arbalestiers hanging around.

I'm pretty excited about this! I had a couple of compound bows back in the day (still do, actually, but I bet they need restringing) and I've always enjoyed archery. It is a neat hobby, and I used to be pretty alright at it. Hopefully I can get that back and then some.

e: haha, long shot

Iso's created a new writing system for English where, rather than letters that sort of have to do with the sound of the word, English words are written using Chinese characters that mean the same roughly the same thing. For things like ambiguities, certain little word endings like aspect markers, and words like "Marco" that don't exist in Chinese, the original latin letters are used. (For example, 一 means "one", and has three written forms here: 一A for the word "a", 一N for the word "an", and 一e for the word "the".)

Exactly correct, except a few grammar words (like "to VERB") remain letters.

This strange writing system has roots in Japanese, which mixes kana and kanji the same way I mix letters and sinograms here. So this gives a good approximation of the inner workings of the Japanese orthography.

I say sinograms because I am planning to write Graeco-Latin terms that are not thoroughly assimilated into English using characters that look like, are built on the same principles of, but are not Chinese characters. This was a Vietnamese thing, though they used their home brews to write native words.

I realize this is a bit of a longshot, but I've decided to take up crossbowin' as a hobby, and I was wondering if anyone else had any experience with it. Mostly I'm just wondering if anyone has any kind of tips on what brands are better or more reliable; I think I've settled on a pretty basic recurve since I have no intention of hunting (and it's actually illegal in my state, which is... surprising?) so the breadth isn't a disadvantage and the ease of use and maintenance is a huge plus, but I don't really know if any manufacterer is worth seeking or avoiding.

Probably just get a Barnett if nobody knows. And let's face it, I doubt we've got any arbalestiers hanging around.

I'm pretty excited about this! I had a couple of compound bows back in the day (still do, actually, but I bet they need restringing) and I've always enjoyed archery. It is a neat hobby, and I used to be pretty alright at it. Hopefully I can get that back and then some.

e: haha, long shot

I, um, I think crossbows are really cool...

; -;

I know basically nothing about them, though.

(I also want to get back into archery, but there don't seem to be any on-campus facilities for it, and it's not beyond the point of "hobby I would go drastically out of my way to get into")

I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my recurve bow.

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_{I mean you're a kid, what have you done that's worth talking about?}

I used the school’s Cray to play Pong.

I genuinely enjoy marsksthonship in all its forms, and would probably invest in a handgun or rifle if it weren't such an expensive hobby and gun culture weren't such a black hole of awfulness. I find precision very satisfying, and the ability to do things most people can't a rewarding sensation; both are reasons I enjoy needlepoint as well, which I find pretty funny: I like shootin' for the same reason I like stitchin'.

I'm actually a little disappointed you turned out not to like the archering too much. I remembered you mentioning you had gotten your hands on a bow and were taking a class; I was kind of hoping it would be a shared interest. Ah well!

and gun culture weren't such a black hole of awfulness.

I wouldn't let things like this dissuade you though. I try not to let a culture/fanbase/annoying people that I don't like convince me that something's not worth getting into. I know lots of guitar junkies with attitudes I can't stand, but that doesn't make me like guitar any less. If gun enthusiasts are awful, then oh well! go on with your matthewsmanship!

so I'm playing a game on a russian server, and all the world chat is in russian. Chrome translates it automatically for me (we live in the future guys), but the translation is spotty, especially since chat logs tend to be very informal and fractured. it makes for some very entertainingly nonsensical exchanges.

[10:51:28]< Wild gunner > Not at all. Conductive particles of divine mudrrosti I suddenly spewed out of myself.
[10:51:32]< KOT > Wild gunner, Yet you say "uzbagoysya"

Hey guys, I'm taking a theatre class on using design thinking concepts to reinvent ideas about performance. One of the things we're doing is trying to start from the needs and stories of the general public rather than just our own ideas. So, if any of you would care to be interviewed in the next couple days, let me know and we can arrange something over irc or skype or whatever. Thanks a lot!

OK sorry about interrupting with my personal plug, back to our collective bullshitery.

Hey hold on he's the one doing the interview

okay :3

Hey, sorry about the delay.

The idea of this first assignment is to explore people's conceptions of the American Dream, the ways people regularly use technology, and how those two might play into each other. So, the stuff I'd be asking is like "What do you think about the American Dream" and "How do you regularly use technology". The point is to somehow expose underlying needs that we can, like, address in our performance. I'm still not totally clear on what that means or what form it's going to take, but we're probably not going to like use anyone's story verbatim.

Sorry if I've derailed the nonsense parade.

Well, the diamond thing notwithstanding, Western-style weddings are generally cheaper than the traditional ones in Asia (source: my parents had two weddings).

are you saying my dad isnt a reliable secondary source ill have you know hes a civil servant

I also find this interesting.

Additional non-Eagleland perspectives, please? How do you guys feel about American culture seep? Does it deprive local culture of the limelight, or is it a tolerable import?

A bit of both.

I'm in Canada, it is friggin' cold. I think a year ago it was snowing all of October where I was. Year before that it was raining hard. Everyone was wearing parkas and jackets over their costumes, so most trick-or-treaters were angry, if not sad that they can't have as much fun as people in the U.S.. They then ask their parents for candy since half the houses were like, "Are you crazy? It's fucking snowing, go away" and the other half were "Uhh yeah we weren't really expecting many kids to go trick-or-treating so here, have ONE Rockets since we didn't buy much candy."

and then some kids just plain couldn't make it b/c their parents suck and think it's too cold.
it's never too cold, suck it up

and yet, in the downtown area, all the adults were havin' COSTUME PARTIES INDOORS AND FUN AND AWESOMENESS.

Conclusion: in Canada, having "Traditional trick-or-treating" and all that is (for the most part) unlikely so adults resort to MAKING THEIR OWN AWESOME OCCASIONS as the rest of us adolescents (and younger) suffer.

As also a Canadian, trick or treating is a pretty normal thing at Halloween. I always had a pretty good haul as a kid, even though it was really god damn cold. And now that I'm just on candy duty, we get a decent number of kids coming to the door every year.

Halloween's most enthusiastic proponents are the Warehouses

As an insider I have but one thing to say...
According to my Manager, it's being planned for Black Friday to be imported too
(It'll be renamed to Red Friday of course. The Warehouse LOVES calling everything red-something or other))

We have on occasion gotten a few trick or treaters; I always wanted to do it when i was young (free candy!) but Mum never let me, so good on those kids who managed to convince their parents i guess. The only time I've really celebrated halloween was a vaguely relevant dress up sleepover i had at my american friend's house, during which i ate so many candycorns i gave myself a stomach ache.

In Christchurch we do have a kind of americany christmas thing, though- Christmas lights. (i think it might have been started by a canadian couple actually, now that i think about it). One neighbourhood here goes absolutely bananas with Christmas lights, fully decking out their entire houses. Some even make treats and things to give away to the people who come by to look. It's really cool!

On a vaguely related note one cultural quirk i found really weird while i was in the Netherlands was that i got congratulated for my boyfriend's birthday while i was over there. "Congratulations" isn't quite the right translation (boyfriend explained it to me but i've forgotten now), but it was really strange to me! I mean, what do i have to do with it; is it because i allowed him to live for another year? :B

Pop quiz time!
Whose fault is it when somebodies kitchen catches on fire because they left a frying pan with oil on the stove.

A)The person who left the oil on the stove
B)The place who sold fryingpan to the customer, because it is obviously a defective product amirite. no, you listen to ME you have to reimburse me for my damaged stove and kitchen and the bond because it's a rental property. Also, my kids are traumatised from it, so you need to pay me for that too. If you don't I'll tell the newspaper and TV and the commerce commission!

The Correct answer is

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secret option
C)Videogames

Halloween: no change. The two theme parks play it big but as far as I can tell nothing is different.

I for one would like to see Australian cinema be more of a thing

Worth mentioning that in Japan, New Years is a holiday period with particular religious observances. Some traditions like celebrating everyone's birthday on New Years have fallen out of favour, but you still perform particular rites on New Years in regards to people who have passed away in the preceding year.

On New Years, all the shops are closed. Christmas is not a public holiday in Japan; New Years is the "western" equivalent for the winter holiday where family annually gathers.

Japan does Halloween the way it does other Western holidays, which is in a manner that is hecka quaint. All the grocery stores and 100 yen shops I've been in have a section for Halloween decorations. We don't do Trick or Treat, but expat communities will have costume parties.


New Zealand observes Christmas, New Years, New Years' Holiday, Cup and Show Weekends which vary from region to region, the Queen's Birthday, Easter Weekend, and Waitangi+ANZAC Days (our history's equivalents to America's Independence Day and Veterans' Day).

Boxing Day is also a public holiday, unless you're in retail. In which case it's the fuckoff busiest day of the year (or tied with Christmas Eve). New Years will also be busy if you're in hospitality. Major cities put on an event of some description, bars are open, and if you're not down for those you go party at friends'/family's.



@ Supes: It isn't, though, is my perception of it? When I think of Halloween, sure, I think costumes and sweets, but the concept of it being an American celebration is very engrained in my perception of it. Because the majority of New Zealand television/music/film/books are imported from the USA, as a kid I saw Halloween on TV and other serialised works and the aforementioned stuff really appealed to me. How could it not?

There was always a reluctance with my parents to let me and my sisters go out trick-or-treating - not because I lived in a dangerous neighbourhood or had particularly odious neighbours, but because we lacked the cultural justification to traipse onto people's property and ask for stuff. Sure, we could do that and nobody could really grumble because 'tis the season or whatever, but it's a piece of alien cultural identity which especially failed to mesh with my parents' culture and upbringing.

On the contrary, the holiday would stress me out because I could see my parents getting stressed out by my younger sisters' badgering for treats and costumes and the chance to go trick or treating. It stopped being fun for my parents, and that's about when it stopped being a mystical spooky celebration for me as well.

I've, like, got photos from when I was one or so, and me and my parents were living in New York. There's one of me in a stroller in a pumpkin outfit, so it's not like my parents were always against Halloween full stop. They just didn't feel it appropriate to go shoehorning a culture they had no connection to into an inappropriate context. They wanted my sisters to be proud of and represent their own culture(s), not the ones being romanticised by American TV. Those two gave up on learning Japanese not long into primary school, so the TV/books they absorbed were pretty exclusively American fare (unlike me, who read the Japanese equivalent of Captain Underpants and- and in retrospect this seems really fucking crucial -I absorbed most of my general knowledge through educational manga like these).

If I ever end up Stateside in a late October? Hell yeah I'm putting a costume together. I'm even attending a costume party at the end of this month. On the other hand, Halloween is by historic association a stressful time of year for me, and makes it very easy for me to feel cynical about American culture creep.

A lot of holidays in the U.S., they way they are celebrated now, at least, were basically invented or hijacked by business to sell more stuff. In case that’s not enough, the Congress wastes a lot of time inventing useless days of commemoration at the behest of businesses hoping to “get theirs” (and this is despite having rules against that since the 90s... ain’t no rule says you can’t acknowledge that today is National Caramel Custard Day). These things are not completely unique to this country, but I think it a little amusing in a way about how hand-wringing about the crass commercialism of American holidays is now itself a crassly commercialized holiday tradition (and to think that I can do it for free!).

So basically, if you see these traditions being imported, maybe it’s because your local industries decided they want in on some of that filthy lucre. But maybe it’s still a big heartless MNC, who am I to say.

Unrelated:

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